Wednesday, 4 February 2009

Updated list of my Nokia 5800 annoyances - despite it being a very good phone. I'm also sure they can be easily fixed with a firmware update.

Updated 18-JAN-2010

Music Player, Realplayer & Radio* When using the 'find' option in the music player, typing a few characters and then pressing and holding backspace will ask you to delete the currently selected file (if one is selected) when the cursor reaches the beginning. Obvious bug FIXED!* Shuffle and repeat should be available without digging into the menu (toggle by touching the icons on-screen)* Skip, pause, play should be readily available, wherever you are in the System. Now you still need to navigate to the music player.FIXED!* An iTunes-style option to level the volume of songs. Nothing is more annoying than having Judas Priest destroy your ears because you increased the volume to hear the words of a softer previous song.* When you press 'play' on the headset, the player should just start (or the radio, depending on what was used most recently) and start to play, as was the case with the Nokia 5310.* The equaliser is not available when streaming files with Realplayer.* Songs show up in the ringtone list and vice-versa.* Realplayer does not play in the background* Realplayer lacks connection prioritisation* Radio does not auto-resume after another application used the audio channel. The music player usually does.Fixed in v20.0.012

Home Screen & Media bar* There is no landscape mode for the home screen, that's a bit silly if you have it on the table stand.* The homescreen and the mediabar should have a "menu" button that brings up the Symbian Menu. Having to press the physical white button is such an anticlimax in your touchscreen experience.* Why not have four contacts of your choice PLUS four favourite programs PLUS the calendar? The screen is big enough to display a combination of the Shortcut Homescreen and the Contact Homescreen and much more!* If you launched a program (such as the music player) via the menu (ie. not via the media bar), then the media bar will show no indication that the program is open (little ball in the right upper corner of the icon). This is the case if you start the player from the media bar.Fixed in v20.0.012

Calendar, alarm, clock* Adding birthdays to contacts is useless as they do not show up in the calendar. Also the anniversary option in the calendar does not provide an alternative, since it does not show the person's age.* Adding a memo/calendar item/meeting/... through handwriting can be a pain when you get to entering the time. You have to wait until every number is recognised and transferred to the application. If you write too fast, you will overwrite the previous character you've entered. Clear bug.Fixed in v20.0.012* When I open the calendar, I regularly get an error message: "alarms missed due to time change", which is not the case.Seems to be fixed in v20.0.012

General* The phone often crashes (some lines + auto reboot) very often (if not always) when the focus is stolen from some applications such as Fring and the France24-player. This happens for instance when someone calls while using one of those applications, or after the call, or when receiving a message. Biggus buggus!SEEMS TO BE OK MOST OF THE TIME NOW* The remote control (on the headset) has a phone button. This should only work to pick up the phone or hang up, but pressing it will also change the channel on the radio player and song on the music player. The worst thing is, that this cannot be prevented by "locking" the remote control.* Selecting/Marking items in a list could be easy on a touchscreen by simply adding checkboxes. Now I still need to use the menu for every item.* Scrolling through large lists is a pain, especially without the stylus. Is there a decent solution for this?KINETIC SCROLLING TOOK CARE OF THIS SINCE v40* Popup-notifications should disappear on touching them, so they don't interrupt interaction for such a long time (old annoyance with Nokia)* It's still impossible to copypaste from the browser. Copypaste should also be available in every menu (over right click for instance), such as the menu where you enter your wireless key. :)* Right-click (touching and holding to show a context menu) should be available more often and could take some of the load from the soft key menus.* No way to handwrite hyphens, even though they're pretty common in European languages.* Not every programme has a landscape mode (such as the calculator and the dialler).* Touch sensitivity should be configurable.* The notification light (the white menu button that blinks slowly when you have a new message) should blink a little quicker/more often, as you usually don't stare for five seconds at your phone to see if you have any messagesFIXED* Theme effects flicker. When an animation (such as a toast menu that slides into the screen) comes to an end, the menu will disappear shortly and reappear. This is irritating when you're trying to work quickly and also it looks crap. I guess that's why Nokia disabled them by default.Fixed in v20.0.012* I miss an option to synchronise the notes I made on my phone. I should be able to quickly access whatever I've been musing on in the train on my pc, so I can start writing. Notes can be backed-up, but not synced.Fixed in v20.0.012* The accelerometer is way too sensitive, which leads to significant delays. For instance, when the Berlin subway gathers speed, my phone will sometimes think it's being held upright and change its view. Apparently this has been fixed in a new firmware update, which sadly isn't available to me yet.Fixed in v20.0.012

Calling, Messaging & Contacts* The messaging app often crashes upon opening or retrieving e-mailSEEMS TO BE OK* Bring back 'recently used contact'. The Nokia 5310 had a memory of the ten contacts you wrote messages to or that called you or that you called. It also had the possibility to have one favourite contact (which was great as I text one special person quite often).* Language setting per contact. Wouldn't it be great if you could say: my girlfriend speaks French, so that when I text her, the T9 text predicition will change automatically to French.* Incremental search in the contact browser was a good idea. However, the keys jump around too much, so you can't really use it in a quick manner. It'd be much easier if the keys kept their position as you type, and if any gaps were filled with new letters. Or even better: T9-Style searching through the contact list, as on Sony Ericsson's phones.* Writing a smiley in a message is a pain: You need to go to the special characters tab to write ':-' and then press shift to have your ')', and then back to your alphabet tab. This should be easier, for instance with a smiley tab or something similar. You can already circumvene this by using handwriting shortcuts, but that's not much of a solace when you're using the fullscreen keyboard.* If the system tray reports a new e-mail, it is impossible to see it if you're in the browser environment. The messaging app opens but switches back immediately to the browser.* There is no way to save multiple bluetooth attachments at once* There is no efficient way to leave the messaging app without quitting it (in order not to break off Mailbox connection). Implement a "Hide" button like with podcasting, Fring and other apps, which leaves the app running in the background.* Deleting an e-mail from e.g. a Gmail account will thereafter take me to the oldest mail (scrolling all the way down) in the mailbox, instead of the most recent.* E-mail lacks a reply-all function* Adding a birthday to a contact, will crash the contacts application.Fixed in v20.0.012

Connectivity & Web* Network prioritisation should be available in every program and every service. Also, you should be given the option to switch to GPRS when the WiFi connection drops (for instance, when you leave home).* RSS feeds do not always work (sometimes it says: format error)MORE FORMATS ARE SUPPORTED

Search App* The search app sometimes does not find songs the first time. You need to search the web first, then return and it will search again, finding the song. Very reproduceable.FIXED* Since v.20.0.012, the search app has improved immensely. However, it opens songs that were found in its own instance of the music player, instead of in the music player itself. This may be a feature, but it's also annoying because it means you cannot search for other things when listening to the song you've found.

Camera* The camera will refuse function after a few times use. The seeker will only display a black image. When you then press the button to shoot, it will take a few seconds and then tell you "error" and to restart the phone. Very reproduceable, seems to coincide with video player no longer showing picture, only music. Update: this seems mostly the case when you used the Barcode reader application (and rotated the phone resp. made the UI rotate).THIS WAS A PROBLEM WITH MY PHONE ONLY, IT WAS REPLACED

17 comments:

Writing a smilie using T9 is not that difficult as you think: just hit the 1 button three times to create a :-) and then hit * to change the emoticon. Although I totally agree with you that Nokia should think of some way to faster use smilies in text messaging

Hi Georgie, I absolutely agree. I've also listed those complaints "the notification light blinks way too slowly" and "bring back the recently used/favourite contact". I absolutely think that having a "favourite contact" is great for the many monogamous people on this world ^^

I have a couple bugs that i didn't found in your list (20.0.0.012 is the version i'm using), please note that some of these bugs may be related...

- My memory card (that came with the phone) has lot's applications (many aren't installed) and the entire content of my older mobile phone card (a 64Mb card), by some reason mobile phone doesn't start with card putted on - but works fine if i put it after insert PIN code! (please note that i left the mobile phone an entire night to get on with card inside) - My guess would be that one folder of my old mobile phone possesses some weired name that might screw up when starting up, i say this because my phone was Japanese (i have some Japanese e-books on it)

- If i go my music player musics won't show there - not even musics that came with phone and are in phone memory - this happens even if i go there without ever putting the memory card!

- I have 3 copies of AccuWeather icon aplication - i installed it, then removed it - now i have 3 useless copies of that icon that won't start the aplication (well, it's uninstalled)

This pretty much says it all, i also have the long lists scrolling bug and the random hue change glitch.

Oh, i also have another graphic glitch with landscape input mode, but since it should be application dependent i don't think it worths being said...

I can pretty much agree to most of your annoyances. I have a few of my own to add:

The on-screen QWERTY virtual keyboards (both the mini and full-screen) really need the 5th row of number keys. I think there's plenty of room on the screen - at least in the mini-qwerty mode - for that row. It takes a lot of extra shift key presses to switch back and forth between numeric/letter mode.

In the search screen, if I bring up the mini-qwerty keyboard, the backspace key cannot be used to delete characters in the middle of a string. Even if I mark a sequence of characters, the backspace key always deletes from the end of the line. Maybe this is a feature, but I can't see its usefulness.

After 2 months of use, I still find it inconvenient that list items must be double-clicked. I think Nokia should copy the way Windows Mobile works: A single click selects and activates an item. A context menu will be shown if you press and hold a list item.

Which brings me to another general point: The user interface doesn't benefit as much as it could of the large touch screen. A lot of functions are still controlled by the context menu available via the soft keys in the bottom of the display. I think that more functions could be made available via soft buttons.

i am experiencing a problem with my music player list. Yesterday, I deleted a song from my list. Then when it went back to the list, the song name list (all songs) stated with "K" then I can;t find the songs that starts before "K". I thought that it was deleted but when I tried to play the first song on the list (starts with letter K), the song being played is the song on my list (alphabetically). When I went back to the song list, then tried to look at the song details, the info of the song (title name, album, artist) is the first song in my list (alpahbetically). It appears that the list shows a different title to the original song. I just thought it was a bug. But my friend suggested it may be a virus. Anyway, I'll try to back-up my files and reformat my memory card tonight. If it will not change, I will go back to the Nokia store.

i am experiencing a problem with my music player list. Yesterday, I deleted a song from my list. Then when it went back to the list, the song name list (all songs) stated with "K" then I can;t find the songs that starts before "K". I thought that it was deleted but when I tried to play the first song on the list (starts with letter K), the song being played is the song on my list (alphabetically). When I went back to the song list, then tried to look at the song details, the info of the song (title name, album, artist) is the first song in my list (alpahbetically). It appears that the list shows a different title to the original song. I just thought it was a bug. But my friend suggested it may be a virus. Anyway, I'll try to back-up my files and reformat my memory card tonight. If it will not change, I will go back to the Nokia store.

Hi, I am experiencing problems with displaying my calendar items on the main screen - in fact they had disappeared mysteriously overnight. I searched the web and found out that I am not the only one... see discussion here for example: http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/discussions/board/message?message.uid=439848

Copy and paste in the browser: a drastic option is to use opera mini - a great alternative browser.I suggest version 5 beta+ as v4 always seems to crash on me. As for annoyances, the music player doesnt auto-pause when the headphones are taken out instead switching to the speakers. This can be quite embarrassing on a train etc if the cord catches and pulls out the socket...

Will be watching this list to see things that are fixed in the next updates!

Things that annoy me:- Organizing the app icons/list arrangement is a pain.. especially if you need to move lots of them to other folders.- Saving files received through bluetooth (i think you mentioned this one) - trying to get a 3rd bluetooth thingy)- The landscape/portrait mode thingy being too sensitive.- Not being able to save notes to text to transfer them out of the computer (my alternative is to upload them to ovi through sync and copy pasting from there)- Connection settings, bluetooth, apps manager etc all hidden deep in the settings folder. Not even sure where is what sometimes.

To be able to write a hyphen, just create a 'shortcut' for it. It won't actually be shorter (and you'll have to invent a symbol for it - I used something like /_ ) but it will allow you to use it without switching the input type.

Also, for the recently used contacts, doesn't pressing the green button do what you want?

I figured that out too. But I meant writing smileys without the handwriting function. I mean I don't wanna switch to handwriting to make an easy smiley. On the other hand, when you get used to it, writing :) is quickly done on the full qwerty.